


A Lesson In Nepotism

by CaffeinatedWriter



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon Melting Pot of Religious Lore, Crowley is so soft, Crowley was an archangel, Established Relationship, M/M, strained sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeinatedWriter/pseuds/CaffeinatedWriter
Summary: Crowley is not so naive as to expect that Heaven nor Hell is done with them; he does expect their focus to be on their own.





	A Lesson In Nepotism

**Author's Note:**

> This is purely self-indulgent and held up by copious amount of personal headcanon but I sincerely hope it can be enjoyed anyways.

Crowley notes with no shortage of amusement that Aziraphale’s presence alone might have been the key factor to his lack of patronage on the rare occurrence that the shop was open during any reasonable hour.

It’s only a guess but his absence certainly had drawn in quite the crowd. Far more people than the angel himself would have ever allowed in the shop at once and he knows he’s in for quite an earful if Aziraphale returns to a packed shop.

Still, he does nothing but blearily watch as humans mill around stacks of books they have no chance of leaving with. It’s rather interesting, their interest, and though Crowley does not approve of the lingering chill they bring in from the gloomy weather persisting selfishly outside, observing them does relieve him some from the absolute crawl of time until his angel returns and he is rewarded a well deserved nap.

He yawns, subtly tasting the comforting familiarity that is the smell of old books and what lingers of Aziraphale. And then he blinks. His head lifts slowly from where it had been resting against the counter, eyes darting around the room.

The humans are not moving.

No fingers gently sliding against spines or restless fidgeting or the telltale rise and fall of chests. Completely still. They’re not prone to that less they died, in his experience.

“I can not see what is special about you, demon,” says a voice from beside him and he turns to look at her, put together and familiar in an ugly kind of distorted way and absolutely the last being he wants to see, above Hastur and fucking Gabriel. She stares ahead from next to him with a professional sort of disinterest, legs crossed primly in what passes as divine attire these days.

Crowley mourns the day looking like the CEO of a fortune 500 became the trend of the modern day archangel. It’s so cold and ridiculous and completely fitting to the narrative.

“Oh. Michael,” he greets awkwardly with misplaced guilt and she freezes. It’s so minute, were Crowley not so intimately aware of her body language even after thousands of years apart, he may have missed it. He wishes that were the case but luck rarely played a part in his relationship with any angel.

She turns finally, gracing him the privilege of eye contact and there’s an emotion in her eyes that he bets hasn’t seen the metaphorical light of day in many millennia. Crowley feels the inkling of something he similarly only remembers as an echo and this entire exchange quickly dissolves into something unsettlingly known.

There always was something very cutting about upsetting Michael.

“Take off your glasses,” she instructs, sharp and commanding and he scoffs, waving her off. Michael has not been anything close to the boss of him in an unfathomable amount of time and he won’t start listening to orders today.

“Fuck off,” he dismisses, yelping when she instantly grabs his wrist with one hand and swiftly removes his sunglasses with the other. His eyes take a moment to adjust to the abrupt change in lighting and she takes an equally visible moment to adjust to the sight staring back at her.

“Oh, Admael,” Michael whispers and he shakes her hand off in an attempt to ease his own discomfort.

“Haven’t heard that one in a while,” he muses with a humor he doesn’t feel. She continues to stare holes into his soul and he’s catapulted to a time when that look meant something to him. The very thought makes him antsy in the silence. “My name is Crowley. You know that. Or you can just keep calling me demon. ‘ts a bit rude though.”

“Rude,” Michael chimes back like the idea of it is absurd and Crowley rolls his eyes.

“So you listen to Gabriel now, huh?” he switches gears, hoping the topic change will in the very least move her along to her point.

“I  _ do not _ listen to Gabriel,” she seethes and Crowley perks at such a strong show of annoyance, age old instinct kicking in.

“Oh well, it just seems to me like you listen to Gabriel now,” he continues with such calculated casualness and revels in the way she uncrosses and recrosses her legs. Such a minor loss of control and she’s already fumbling her composure.

Heaven must be an absolute bore if this is the most challenge Michael receives these days.

“I don’t listen to Gabriel,” she repeats with venom dripping between each syllable. “I would think you’d know better than to speak on things you know nothing about by now. Heavenly matters for instance,  _ Crowley _ .”

He grins, allowing the inhuman aspects of his form to present themselves freely.

“Ssssure. Of course. Things have changed. Tell me, Michael, what does it take for an archangel to Fall these days? I have a theory.”

She doesn’t answer and again, were she not her and he not him, he might not have noticed the crack in the stone of her expression. He never wanted this, not in this manner. All in all, Crowley would have been pleased to go an eternity without having to personally confront any of them sibling to sibling.

It was so much easier on everyone to just be the demon.

“There was a flood. Oh, forever ago now, by human standards. Do you remember?” he asks, unsurprised when she doesn’t answer. He carries on as if she had. “I kept thinking She was so keen on great big overreactions with so many innocent casualties only to promise to never do it again.”

“Admael-”

“They got a rainbow, Michael. What did you get?”

Her guilt and pain bleeds from her. Crowley can taste it in the air more than any visual signal. It validates him in ways he never wanted to be validated. He does not want this and he can not stop it.

“You lot can do whatever you want now, it seems. Consorting with Hell even. Did you enjoy your family reunion with your favorite brother?” he asks and there is a bitterness he can not keep out of his words.

“It wasn’t like that,” she argues, far softer and with less conviction than he’s ever heard from her.

“He refused to see you,” Crowley muses as she averts her eyes back into the expanse beyond the walls of the bookshop. He wonders what she’s looking at. Considers it might be wherever Aziraphale is, tending to errands with the reassurance and trust that Crowley was looking after things.

Or maybe Adam who, in a different lifetime in vastly different circumstances, Crowley knows Michael would devote her entire being into knowing as deeply as she did his father.

“It’s probably because he’s a bloody lunatic. It’s not Lucifer, you know. He’s  **not** Lucifer. And when you inevitably twist this whole thing into a mindless bloodbath for the sake of divine fate or  _ whatever _ , it’s not going to be with Lucifer so what’s the fucking point in the end? If this was the capital P plan all along, that’s fucked. We’re all being played, Michael.”

He says more than he means to. Allows too much to bleed through but he needs her to understand everything that he really wants to say to her. To them as a whole because there was a time when he was fondly annoyed by Gabriel and Michael was the one gently, sternly easing them apart in their quarrels but that part of Crowley’s soul has been ripped from his being and there’s a hole there now that he can never fill.

A mournful part of him realizes that he no longer wishes to.

“I will take my leave,” she says after a beat and he accepts that this is for the best. She’s picked apart age old wounds he’d mostly forgotten and that’s a new cruelty only she’d be able to accomplish accidentally.

“Of course. Have to make your report,” he agrees, looking away from her. He makes no move to replace his glasses. Everything already feels ripped open and exposed. He luxuriates in the pain of that.

“I will not tell the others. It would…hurt them,” Michael corrects and Crowley barks out a laugh.

“Oh Michael, there was almost a heart in you for a moment there,” he says, hoping it picks at her the way she’s so effortlessly done to him. “I don’t know why it would but if it makes you feel better, I’m so happy now.”

He chances a glance and stumbles over the complicated mix of anger and reassurance the statement draws from her. That is, he supposes, about all he could hope from it. There are parts of him that still desire to please Michael’s evidently chronic lingering case of Big Sister.

They’re small parts but he can’t deny their presence.

“Did you figure it out? What’s special about me?” he asks, not particularly expecting an answer.

Michael turns and waits until she draws eye contact from him.

“I am certain what is special about you, Crowley.”

And then she’s gone and the shop is filled with the suddenly deafening noise of humans existing. Crowley attempts to center himself as the bell at the door jingles and at least half the shop slinks out with a sudden need to be anywhere else.

He looks up and grins at the mild annoyance that looks back at him.

“Darling,” Aziraphale greets with the inflection of someone chastising a child who knows they’ve been naughty. If that ain’t the truth.

“They just want to look at your junk, Angel. Who am  _ I _ to blame them?” he leers in a thinly veiled attempt to draw attention away from the way his chest is attempting to burst.

It was the wrong thing to say, evidently. The angel’s face contorts into cautious concern.

“Is something the matter, Dearest? That was incredibly low brow for you,” Aziraphale frets, reaching out to cup the side of Crowley’s face with a gentleness that Crowley still can’t fathom is meant for him.

“I don’t know what you mean. My brow couldn’t get any lower,” he dismisses, nuzzling into the touch despite himself. It helps with the grounding but Crowley figures it’s safer to move the discussion elsewhere before the angel dwells too long. “Did you get your book?”

It works although Crowley can tell Aziraphale has merely put a pin in the thought.

“No, unfortunately my contact cancelled at the last moment. I will be having a strongly worded discussion with him about follow through, I think,” the angel huffs and Crowely hides a smile into the hand still lovingly cupping his face.

“Today is a wash, I think. It’s wasted on business. We should cut our losses and sleep the rest of it away,” he wheedles, mouthing at the meat of Aziraphale’s palm. Can practically feel the cogs turning in his head but Crowley’s whole gig for thousands of years was to be a distraction. Tempting Aziraphale didn’t require any tempting at all.

“Is that so?” the angel asks like he hasn’t given in already.

Crowley smiles as the shop clears out without either of them saying a word. Without moving. Without any influence other than the fact that Crowley doesn’t want them here and therefore, neither does Aziraphale.

“I love you, Zira,” he mumbles, too soft. He’s never quite able to get it out as casually as he wants to. Nothing feels casual about loving Aziraphale. Not in the beginning. Not in six thousand years of thinking it’d be fine as long as the angel was just around to be loved. Certainly not now that it’s in the open and readily returned.

Everything about that is ethereal.

“And I adore you. Let’s get you to bed, Darling,” he answers, urging Crowley to stand and so generously allowing the issue to rest until later. Only rest. He knows better than to think he’s gotten away with anything.

With Aziraphale, he rarely gets away with anything.

He finds that he really is so happy.


End file.
